Privacy Policy
Effective: July 28, 2026 · Lanternlight Studios ("we", "us") · Covers the game STARLESS: Relight the Sky on iOS and Android, and this website.
The short version. You can play STARLESS without giving us a name, an email, or any account at all. If you want your progress to survive a lost phone, you can attach an email address — that's the only piece of personal information we hold, and it's optional. We use no advertising identifiers, no ad networks, and no cross-app tracking, and we don't sell or share personal information. You can delete everything at any time, from inside the game or from this website.
1. The game
1.1 What we collect
| Data | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| An account identifier — a random code generated by our server. Not derived from your device. | Always, from first launch. A guest account is created automatically. | It's what your save is filed under. On its own it identifies an account, not a person. |
| Your game save — progress, familiars, star powers, relics, gear, cosmetics, titles, currency balances, event and mail state. | Always. | The server is the authority on your progress, so it survives a reinstall and can't be edited by cheats. |
| An email address and whether it's verified. | Only if you choose to attach one (Settings → Account). | Account recovery and sign-in on a new device. We sign you in with a one-time code — STARLESS has no passwords. |
| An Apple or Google sign-in identifier — the stable ID the provider hands us. | Only if you sign in with Apple or Google. | Same purpose: recovery and sign-in. We don't receive your contacts, profile or friends. |
| A two-factor secret and hashed recovery codes. | Only if you switch on two-factor authentication. | To protect an account that matters to you. The recovery codes are stored hashed, so we can check one without being able to read it. |
| A consent timestamp. | When you accept the terms while attaching an email. | To record that consent was given, and when. |
| Purchase records — account identifier, store (Apple or Google), product, store transaction ID, a one-way hash of the receipt, whether it validated or was refunded, and what it granted. | Only when you buy something. | To deliver what you bought exactly once, to answer refund and chargeback questions, and because tax law requires a seller to keep records of its sales. |
Gameplay events — your account identifier plus an event name from a fixed list (session_start, session_end, app_open, screen_view, tutorial_step, churn_risk) and non-personal properties describing what happened in-game. | During play. Best-effort: if this fails, the game carries on regardless — it's never allowed to interrupt you. | Aggregate balance and stability work: which stage is a wall, where the tutorial loses people, what's crashing. |
| Your IP address, transiently. | On every request, like any internet service. | Delivering the response and rate-limiting abuse. It's held as a short-lived counter and in routine server logs that age out; we don't build a profile from it. |
1.2 What we do not collect
- No advertising identifiers — we never request IDFA or the Android Advertising ID, and the game shows no ads.
- No third-party advertising, attribution or analytics SDKs. The game talks to our own server and nothing else. (You can verify part of this yourself: the app requests no tracking permission.)
- No cross-app or cross-site tracking, no data brokers, no audience sharing.
- No location, contacts, photos, microphone, camera, or health data.
- No payment details. Apple and Google process every purchase; we receive a transaction receipt, never your card number, name or billing address.
- No real name, unless you volunteer one by writing to us.
1.3 Who we share it with
We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for advertising. The only third parties involved are the ones that make the service run: our hosting and database providers (who store the data on our behalf, under contract), and Apple and Google for purchase validation. We disclose data otherwise only if the law compels us.
1.4 How long we keep it
Your account data lives as long as your account does. Delete the account and the account record, the save and the leaderboard entries go with it — see the deletion page, which sets out exactly what's erased and the two categories we're required or asked to keep (purchase records, for tax law; and, until you request otherwise, the pseudonymous gameplay event log).
1.5 Legal basis (GDPR)
- Contract — the account identifier and your save: we can't run the game for you without them.
- Consent — attaching an email, Apple/Google sign-in, two-factor. All optional; withdraw by removing them or deleting the account.
- Legal obligation — purchase records.
- Legitimate interests — rate limiting, fraud and cheat prevention, and pseudonymous gameplay events used to balance and stabilise the game.
2. This website
2.1 Pre-registration
If you pre-register, we store your email address, a timestamp, your consent record, the referral tag in the link you arrived from, your browser's user-agent string, and the two-letter country our host derives from your IP. Your IP address itself is used as a rate-limit counter that expires after one hour. This is stored on Cloudflare infrastructure. We use it to email you at launch and at major milestones — nothing else, and we never pass it to advertisers. Every email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and you can ask us to delete the record at any time.
2.2 Analytics and cookies
This website uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages people read. It sets its own cookies in your browser. We have advertising features switched off — no ad storage, no ad personalisation, no ad-user-data signals — so the data isn't used to build an advertising profile of you, but it is a Google service and we'd rather say so than call it something softer. You can opt out with Google's browser add-on or your browser's own cookie controls. We also run a simple first-party page counter that records the page path and the referring site's hostname, with no cookie and no identifier of any kind.
The game itself contains none of this.
3. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or hand you a copy. In the EEA and the UK these are GDPR rights; in California they're CCPA/CPRA rights; comparable laws apply elsewhere. We don't sell or share personal information as those laws define it, we don't discriminate against anyone who exercises a right, and we don't charge for any of this.
Write to privacy@playstarless.com, or use the self-serve routes: Settings → Account in the game, or the deletion page. We aim to acknowledge within 5 business days and to finish within 30 days. EEA and UK residents may also complain to their local data protection authority.
4. Children
STARLESS is not directed at children under 13 (under 16 in parts of the EEA) and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. The game requires no personal information to play. If you believe a child has attached an email address to an account, write to privacy@playstarless.com and we'll delete it.
5. Security
Identity data and game data are kept in separate stores, deliberately, so that a breach of one is not a breach of the other. Traffic is encrypted in transit. Recovery codes are stored hashed. No system is perfect; if a breach ever affects your data we'll tell you, and we'll tell you what actually happened.
6. Changes
If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top, and we'll say what changed rather than silently reissuing it. Material changes are announced in the game and on this site.
7. Contact
Lanternlight Studios · privacy@playstarless.com · general help at Support.